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Topic: Dom's Ranking of Amazing Race teams (Read 2120 times)

Someone pointed out to me the other day that the method of ranking teams by average position is a bit flawed. It doesn't take into account how many teams competed in each leg. Coming 3rd in a leg of 11 is surely more impressive than coming 3rd out of 3, right?

With that in mind, I've come up with a system that I think is a much more balanced and fairer way to rank teams, rewarding high positions early in the race and punishing low positions in the latter stages of the race. It is also a lot more forgiving to 'blips', whereas a bad finish usually destroys a team's average position.

The math behind it is pretty simple. I messed around with a few ridiculously complicated methods, but it seems like the best spread comes from this formula:

Adjusted Position = (Position * 10) / (Teams in the leg + 1)

From this, we can figure out a team's Adjusted Position on each leg of the race. Finishing first in a leg of 11 gives you an AP of 0.83, while a win at the finish line only gets 2.50, which the system deems to be of the same difficulty as finishing 3rd on a leg of 11.

Anyway, enough of the technical stuff. What do the rankings look like?

Rank

Team

Final Pos

Season

Adjusted Score

Average Pos. Rank

1

Rachel & Dave

1

20

2.31

2

2

Meghan & Cheyne

1

15

2.44

3

3

Tammy & Victor

1

14

2.90

6

4

Eric & Jeremy

2

9

2.91

1

5

Rob & Amber

8

11

2.91

21

6

Nick & Starr

1

13

3.10

10

7

Kris & Jon

2

6

3.11

4

8

Art & JJ

2

20

3.27

5

9

Colin & Christie

2

5

3.37

11

10

Tyler & James

1

10

3.40

13

What a difference! Let's try and make sense of it all. Eric & Jeremy are the biggest losers, falling from 1st place to 4th in the rankings. Sure, they only finished below 2nd once, but their final four legs were run with only 3 other teams twice and 2 other teams twice, and the guys failed to win any of them.

Rob & Amber are the highest jumpers. When you take the actual average position, their single 8th placed finished kinda pollutes their incredible feat of winning the first three legs (a feat that remains unsurpassed). This system recognises that achievement and sees it as much more impressive than winning three legs later in the race.

So what does this mean for the TAR 21 racers? Well only Abbie & Ryan are still in with a shot of breaking into this top ten. But where do they rank at the moment? Below is the same table but with only the first six legs counted.

Rank

Team

Final Pos

Season

Adjusted Score

Average Pos. Rank

1

Eric & Jeremy

2

9

1.43

1

2

Art & JJ

2

20

1.67

2

3

Kris & Jon

2

6

2.11

2

4

Abbie & Ryan

?

21

2.12

2

5

Ken & Gerard

3

3

2.24

6

6

Joe & Bill

3

1

2.33

4

7

Meghan & Cheyne

1

15

2.49

9

8

BJ & Tyler

1

9

2.55

5

9

Andy & Tommy

4

19

2.60

10

10

Rachel & Dave

1

20

2.61

8

As you can see, even though they have the same Average Position as Art & JJ and Kris & Jon (2.00), Abbie & Ryan's Adjusted Position is only slightly lower.

What do you think? Is this system a fairer way to rank Amazing Race teams?

What about using Billboard chart method for determining Billboard-Year-End-Chart?

If one team comes in first in one leg of 11, they'll get point: 11, while the last team got 1.If one team comes in first in one leg of 10, they'll get point: 10, while the last team got 1.Like those until the final leg, but I don't know the best way to count the average.